MacKellar 1.0

Kirk MacKellar

For those of you who regularly follow the blog, you know that yesterday’s post “For Hodge” was sort of a nostalgic tribute to an old high school buddy of mine, Josh MacKellar (A.K.A. Hodge Lendl) who, ironically, I was able to get reconnected with and have continued to stay in touch with through a friendship I have now established with his dad, Kirk MacKellar.

While Hodge’s is a great story (if you missed it, be sure to go check it out) what great story wouldn’t be complete without a sequel (or in this case, the prequel) as we focus on my friendship with the O.G. MacKellar in this edition of Tales of the Reluctant Blind.

What Are The Chances There Are Multiple Different MacKellars Living in Holt?

If you aren’t familiar with MacKellar Screenworks, they do top-notch design and custom screen-printing work. I have used Kirk and MacKellar Screenworks for a variety of projects over the years, everything from plaques (like the sample of the Capital Area IT Council “Founding Member” plaque pictured below,) to vinyl banner displays, to the Accessiversity sign he recently made for me to dress up my Zoom meeting backgrounds (thanks again Kirk!).

On the left is a sample of one of the Capital Area IT Council “Founding Member” plaques produced by MacKellar Screenworks. Photo courtesy of Donald Lovell (pictured on the right) President & CEO of Trouble Shooters Technical Support (thanks my friend!).

The first time I ever remember talking with Kirk was way back in 2007 when I was serving as Executive Director of the Capital Area IT Council. We were shopping around for a local vendor to produce some plaques for the CAITC, and somehow ended up with Kirk’s name and number.

After we were done discussing the specifics of our project, I asked Kirk if he was related to Josh MacKellar, my old high school buddy who I had played basketball and been in Da’ Fellas with (again...you really need to read “For Hodge”...trust me). I had noticed that the address of Kirk’s business was in Holt, so I guess I was thinking that the chances that there were multiple different MacKellar families living in Holt must be pretty slim. Well, I would soon find out that I was right, when Kirk confirmed that Josh was indeed his son.

Once we had established that Josh and I had known each other back in high school where we had played basketball and tennis together, from that point forward, during every subsequent conversation Kirk and I had, we would always reserve a few minutes at the end to cover personal stuff. Kirk would start by providing a quick update on Josh and his most recent whereabouts, and then I would tell him about what I had been up to so he could fill Josh in the next time they spoke. Before long, Josh and I were using his dad like some weird information mule to pass messages back-and-forth to one another.

And for the most part, this is exactly how it has worked over the last 15+ years.

With the exception of an email here or there, I never directly communicated with Josh the entire time he lived down in Tampa, FL. Similarly, I haven’t actually talked to him since he got married and moved up to Maine. But, I feel I know all about him and his family because of these periodic updates I receive from his dad.

And it's not like Kirk is the only source of information out there about Josh, or vice versa. There is a third MacKellar, Josh’s sister/Kirk’s daughter, who also lives in Holt and married into another prominent Holt family, and for a while there, their boys and our boys (who are roughly the same age) were all training together at Original Okinawan Karate of Holt. So, there was plenty of time for catching up while sitting in the dojo waiting area.

You add all of that up, and you feel like you have a pretty good idea you know someone, even if you’re receiving the information in relatively small bursts, and sometimes months, even years go by in between your interactions with them.

And for whatever reason, this unconventional formula seems to work, whether it’s for my friendship with my old high school buddy Josh, or if I’m talking about my friendship with his dad, Kirk. It must just be a MacKellar thing.

Bulldozers & Fate

If that’s all it was, just a few phone calls here, updates about Josh there, it wouldn’t be much of a friendship, by most people’s standards.

But that’s what I love about Kirk.

While we might initially jump on the phone to discuss a work-related issue, or start with talking about something related to Josh, or whatever, our conversations almost always tend to segue into these altogether different subjects and topics that we find we have in common, and before we know it we’ve been on the phone for an hour.

Of course, there are numerous people from the local IT scene that we both know, who run in each of our respective social and professional circles, so we always have that to fall back on – though it rarely ever comes to that.

Back when I was serving as a parent volunteer for Holt-Dimondale Destination Imagination, we had MacKellar Screenworks create the “D.I. Corporate Sponsor” vinyl banner seen in the above photo of one of the performances at the D.I. Dress Rehearsal event at the Holt Jr. High (the former Holt Senior High building located on Aurelius Road).

On the day of the event, I had checked in with Kirk to see if he thought the banner would be ready in time for the dress rehearsal, and he assured me it would be, and he offered to personally drive over to the school to drop it off.

When he showed up a few hours later, he was like a kid in the candy store, going on and on about how he used to be a theater kid, and how being back in the Maurice Pernert Auditorium brought back so many great memories for him. And in typical Kirk fashion, before he took off he insisted on him and I posing for a selfie in front of the stage so that he could send it off to Josh.

Since then, we have probably had a dozen or more conversations about the old high school, former teachers and staff, etc.

Kirk might start with something like, “You probably don't know the name Chandler Nauts, do you?” to which I would respond, “Well actually, Chan used to be my mom’s boss over at Holt Community Education, and the guy who used to take me down to U of M football games at the Big House in Ann Arbor when I was a little kid.”

And so we’d go, round and round, trading stories until we would both be amazed by how much overlap there was across these shared experiences of having grown up in this community we still call home.

I am reminded of one particular email exchange: Josh’s cryptic request to have me tell his dad about driver’s ed, the story I was having trouble recollecting, and the one that I reference in the beginning of the “For Hodge” blog.

The below email exchange happened shortly after one of my hour-long telephone conversations with Kirk…

Kirk: “Josh said to ask you about drivers ed.”

Me: “Hmmmm, I know that we were in the same car with Brooke?? And Heather??, and I believe I did some of my OTR testing with him, but I don't recall anything noteworthy – why, does he remember something that I have been blocking from my memory?? 

Did I accidently back into the gas pump on the driving range or something?? Does he remember Mr. Mutch directing one of his profanity-laden transmissions over our CB radio at me??

Now I’m intrigued—there’s a potentially funny story about high school that I don’t remember.”

Kirk: “Mr. Mutch! I was his student in his first year of teaching. He taught graphics. I thought, ‘Hmm, that sounds like an easy credit.’ It was an easy credit...but a difficult life-long occupation. 

I printed business cards for MARCEL MACKELLAR, BARBER.

My friends would get money for a haircut from their parents. I would cut their hair the way they wanted it (as opposed to how the school wanted it cut.) The school would conspire with the local barbers to stamp-out the Beatle hairstyle.

When the parents would say, "It looks like it hardly got cut!" they would flash the card.

I also learned enough jargon to bluff my way into Lansing's largest screen-printing company. (2/11/74) 

I was running the place in no time, managing employees that were easily twice my age. 

A friend of mine who also took that graphics class went on to study printing at Ferris State. He would lend me his books and we would talk long into the night about printing technology.

That education, near-starvation, and the responsibility of a young child fueled my ambition.”

See what I mean? Cool shit. And I still don’t know what driver’s ed story Josh was talking about…

During a more recent call, Kirk mentioned something about going to Sycamore Elementary. After sharing that I, too, went to Sycamore back in the day, Kirk asked me exactly where I had grown up. I explained that my mom and dad lived in the old Huntley Square neighborhood, behind the old football field. That they were something like the second house ever built in that entire subdivision, to which Kirk nonchalantly responded that he actually lived in the first house in that subdivision. Confused, I asked him, “what do you mean?”, which is when he explained that him and his family had lived in the old house on the corner of Aurelius Road that was part of the farm that was sold off to Francis Fine, the guy who developed Huntley Square. Kirk said that he distinctly remembered the day, when he was 16 years old, and this guy showed up with a bulldozer, knocked down all of the old barns and outbuildings, poured a five-gallon container of gas on the pile of debris and lit it all on fire. He sent me the below photo with the following caption, which is so Kirk.

“This is the farm I grew up on. It was bulldozed so you could grow up there as well”

The old farm house.

Well, Kirk has promised to go back and take a photo of what the house and the surrounding area looks like today, so you’ll have to continue to check back in with the blog and our @accessiversitylabs Facebook page to see the “before and after” picture.

And if I know my friend Kirk, I’m sure there will be another good story in there somewhere…